Blame our shitty patent system. Oracle is just doing what any rational actor would do in a system where being "nice" has practically zero reward, and where anybody can shut you down and steal your money at any time. When defense is not possible, you must attack first.

That doesn't make Oracle any less shitty, and we certainly shouldn't forgive them for their actions, but they're a sociopathic institution, and yelling at them about it will have just as much effect as trying to make Ted Bundy feel guilty. It's

This is now a copyright case. THe patents were ruled invalid in the case. THe case effects everyone in I.T. and Oracle is willing to ruin the whole industry so Elison can make a few billion more.

If the whole api and language is copyrighted on sytnax the whole world will change as everyone from car part manufactures to people who the phillips head can have 170 year monopolies and prevent anything from working together.

If the whole api and language is copyrighted on sytnax the whole world will change as everyone from car part manufactures to people who the phillips head can have 170 year monopolies and prevent anything from working together.

Not the whole world, the U.S. will drop back to somewhere around the stone age. The global rest will be somewhat relieved.

Debatable, quote: "As stated, the prosecution did not appeal to the Norwegian Supreme Court, so the last ruling is seen as a resounding legal victory for the defendant. Norwegian consumer groups like Electronic Frontier Norway were delighted. Having been ethically convinced throughout of the legitimacy of their cause, they now have legal backing—at least in Norway. DVD-Jon and like-minded spirits, encouraged by the rulings, see themselves, and are seen, as crusaders of the open source movement." (http://informationr.net/ir/10-3/paper230.html)

send everyone but China in the stone age

Probably a then 'better' (not that I think China is an alternative to be preferred) model will find followers? Who wants stone-age money (which is virtual anyway by way of fractional banking, automated trading etc.)?

Try to imagine all innovation as you know it stopping instantaneously and every copyright using on a prior copyright exploding at the speed of light.

I almost hope it happens and the resulting factorial of lawsuits 1) destroys oracle and bankrupts Ellison for being the greedy pricks that set off the MAD arms race that is the tech industry's "IP" and 2) shows the public how letting mickey mouse rape them for 170 years kills the "innovation" economy we are supposed to lead the world with on after we let all ou

You need to read up on this some more before posting. Some of the patents were indeed ruled invalid. Not all of them. The case is running in multiple phases. The judge started with the Copyright part - where Oracle seems to think you can copyright an API. The jurors may be deadlocked on that because the judge instructed them to assume that you can copyright an API in their deliberations. The Patent phase will be coming directly after the Copyright phase ends.

When just ONE department of the Canadian government is dropping over $10,000,000 a year on Oracle licences, products and support, what anyone of us can do by not buying Oracle products won't matter. Even worse is the department I work for is so badly tied in to the Oracle stack, we could never hope to get away from it. Don't get me wrong I dislike Oracle as much as anyone right now, but they care about large companies not individuals.

Oracle is just doing what any rational actor would do in a system where being "nice" has practically zero reward, and where anybody can shut you down and steal your money at any time. When defense is not possible, you must attack first.

Google is absolutely the last company you need to worry about bringing a flotilla of patent suits. It took a concerted effort by Microsoft and Apple to get Google to even start looking at patent portfolio purchases (c'est la vie Motorolla, we knew ye well, but now you're worthless except for the sweet IPs). Oracle wanted to take a chunk out of google . . . period.

Whether APis are copyrightable is a matter for professional bodies in computing to consider, such as the ACM and IEEE, not judges nor politicians. It's a technical matter.

And if this technical matter were decided at the professional body level, then this entire farce would have been avoided, because professionals in the discipline would not be stupid enough to deny interoperability by making APIs copyrightable.

Neither the judge nor (even less) the jury have the skill and background to make a sound decision

Whether APis are copyrightable is a matter for professional bodies in computing to consider, such as the ACM and IEEE, not judges nor politicians. It's a technical matter.

And if this technical matter were decided at the professional body level, then this entire farce would have been avoided, because professionals in the discipline would not be stupid enough to deny interoperability by making APIs copyrightable.

Neither the judge nor (even less) the jury have the skill and background to make a sound decision in this area.

Normally I ignore AC's but in this case you hit the nail completely on the head.

This is ta big problem facing our society now: that juries made up of laymen or judges are expect to rule on things they have no clue about and the time taken to educate them is simply unfeasible.

I have been developing software professionally for a decade or so (3 decades if you count when I first learnt basic) and I still have a great deal to learn. I would still have to sit down and draw on much of my experience when it came to deciding this case. I do not see how someone who has just completed coding 101 could really understand the full implications of their decision, let alone someone who has not even got that far.

I also do not think that a sensible decision is that likely if the jury are only able to base it on which witness the sound of liked better.

It would be like basing who runs a country based on a some sort of popularity contest. Oh crap, we actually do that as well:(

That's what experts are for. The bigger problem is that legislators don't understand that stuff either so they make batshit stupid laws. Don't know how you're going to get around that except perhaps nuke the place back into the 16th Century.

And this is why the "powers that be" would like us to be fat, dumb, happy, and most of all uninformed. Actually being stupid helps, too, but that is not actually mandatory so long as any intelligence can be directed towards meaningless pursuits like slashdot

Copyright is not a matter of social or industry benefit, it's a matter of law. Thus, it's a matter for judges (and juries) to determine if APIs are copyrightable under current law, and for Congress to decide if they should be and, since they obviously shouldn't, to fix the law they are (or if the law is sufficiently unclear that judges end up misunderstanding it to that effect).

We separate legislative and judicial powers for a reason, and you seem to be confusing what should be legal (legislative power) wit

You do realize that it is conceivable that the last two combatants could kill each other or the survivor might not live long enough to issue a verdict? And odd or even, if you have to fight until there is only one left standing, you have the same potential problem.

Doh, make them write their verdict on a piece of paper before fighting. And if they both die, just rinse and repeat, bring 12 more and have them fight too. Pane et circem with actual results. Everybody wins.

Better yet, have 6 people from one company fight 6 people from the other company fight to the death. Likely, you'll see a severe reduction of trials fairly soon.

You do realize that it is conceivable that the last two combatants could kill each other or the survivor might not live long enough to issue a verdict? And odd or even, if you have to fight until there is only one left standing, you have the same potential problem.

Not if you implement your combat system to fit the requirements. Serialize all attacks (they never happen simultaneously), and make delivering a deathblow and delivering a verdict be a single atomic operation. That way, if someone dies while del

In my experience on a criminal jury, we went back to the deliberation room, talked it over for an hour or two, all agreed on a clear answer (we had the victim's testimony, and enough other evidence to convict even without the victim's testimony), and walked out with a verdict. Granted, it was an easy case to decide, but the system worked quite well.

The rules for criminal trials in the US are typically: 12-0 you hang, 0-12 you're free, anything else is a mistrial which means you go free for now but the gover

The judge declined to decide in advance whether the APIs are copyrightable at all, but has reserved that decision to himself. In the interest of judicial economy, in the face of an almost certain appeal--no matter which side wins--the judge decided to instruct the jury to assume the worst case: that the APIs are copyrightable, and can be infringed. That way, if the appeal overturns a point of law, the issues of fact won't need to be retried. No need for a new jury. Unfortunately, this may have given the jury the idea that Google was definitely guilty of something.

Note that all existing precedent is against the notion that APIs are copyrightable. And that even before the recent EU decision (which the judge has asked the parties to brief him on). Oracle's argument for why their/em API should be considered special basically boils down to "it was hard!" But the SCOTUS recently reaffirmed that "sweat of the brow" is not a valid argument for copyrightability.

People say that, but judges don't really allow that, and sometimes they allow very few (or none) to be kicked off without cause (though generally it's a couple each side, out of a pool of 100).

They real skew is that for trials over 3 weeks, judges allow pretty much anyone not employed by the government, or a large company to say, can't do it. You end up with mostly unemployed people, and retirees. With the economic condition as it is though, there tends to be some engineers in the pool even after the hardsh

I have been following the trial closely through Groklaw and have observed many interesting things about the progress of this case. Oracle's case has been rather nebulous from the beginning and rather reminds me of the SCO vs. IBM case in many ways including the question of whether or not they actually have the right to sue. Oracle has changed its position several times on several issues from the beginning of this case. In one instance, Oracle agreed to drop one of its claims associated with a patent which was under appeal at the USPTO. It had been rejected recently after it was re-examined. And since the case was still going to trial on schedule, Oracle agreed to drop its claim associated with that patent. But after the trial started, the USPTO approved the patent appeal and then Oracle sought to reinstate its claims against Google for the patent it had agree to drop. In my opinion, it just goes to show Oracle's understanding of what "agreement" means. They already agreed to drop the patent issue. The judge accepted the agreement and wrote "...it is so ordered." DONE is DONE. Oracle may have felt "it won't hurt to ask will it?" Well, yeah, it might... and it did. The judge was annoyed as having to remind Oracle of its agreement and denied its request.

During the copyright phase of the trial, Oracle was pretty "confusing" when it came to its assertions about what is copyrightable. Even people who might be inclined to side with Oracle and knows a bit about copyright law would likely have been astounded at some of their claims. Nevertheless, they made their assertions which were countered by Google. But the thing is, some people are always inclined to err on the side of the plaintiff when they don't understand something or if they believed what Oracle said and simply shut out what Google had to offer as a counter. (This is typical in cases of "belief.")

And the judge already saw this happening even while the trial was in progress. Immediately after the jury went off to decide how to rule, the judge set about trying to manage how a hung jury would be handled or mitigated. He did NOT waste any time on the matter. And this well-timed ruling by an EU court lead to the judge asking questions of Google and Oracle on the matter as the question was rather relevant to the Oracle v Google case.

But Oracle's misinformation isn't limited to asserting what is copyrightable, what portions are copyrightable and all that (and it turns out that Google contributed to Java's code!! How interesting that Google can contribute code to Java and then get sued for it!) it turns out that Sun's CEO blogs were characterized as "unofficial." This claim, of course, is in sharp contrast the the SEC filings Sun had presented in the past. So the blog WAS, in fact, official in function and content. (It's probably not perjury though...Oracle simply didn't know... maybe...)

Google has played their side pretty openly. They didn't hide anything in their case and remained rather consistent in their defence and restated their case consistently throughout. Oracle, on the other hand continues to be elusive and imprecise with their case. Their case had crumbled significantly during pretrial motions and have tested the patience of the judge on numerous occasions. Meanwhile, Google remained cooperative and responsive to the judge and the case. (Seriously, Google wore an extremely white hat in all of this... I rather expected a bit of wriggling and resistance on Google's part, but I just didn't see it... so please, if anyone has an opinion to the contrary, visit Groklaw and show me an example of Google playing games with the legal system. I could be wrong, I just don't think so in this case.)

So any jury in a case of copyright infringement is already challenged by the likes of MPAA and RIAA cases. The jury most often wants to side with the plaintiff as we have seen in the past and grants ridiculously large and punitive awards. And we have seen the transcripts of these trials and the preposterous claims wh

...Oracle, on the other hand continues to be elusive and imprecise with their case....

This basically sums up my 20 years of experience with Oracle Salesmen.

The unspoken rule of thumb with Oracle sales is that there is no "list price" on anything. You price it for whatever you think you can sell it for.

This whole affair doesn't surprise me one bit that Oracle hired a team of lawyers that operate exactly like they do - get as much as you can get, and offer elusive and imprecise information during the negotiations.

The huge and outrageous wins the RIAA has made far overshadow any losses in court. The reason for settling out of court is because it's cheaper and a more guaranteed win for them. Settlements are what they are targetting every time. It is beneficial to all to stay out of court for various reasons.

Instead of asking them to assume that the API was copyrighted as a factor in their decision, the jury should have simply been asked to come to a decision about whether Google copied the API or no. Whether it is copyrighted or not is superfluous to whether or not they copied it... it is only relevant to the issue of copyright infringement. Whether they copied it or not is superfluous to whether or not the API should be subject to copyright. Either way, it's a non-sequitor.

The question as to whether or not they copied the API is not at issue, Google has admitted to copying a subset of the API. The question the jury is deciding is whether or not this is fair use under copyright law, or whether it falls into the other areas where copying is allowed.

More like, "has never denied". "Admitted" makes it sound like they were forced to reveal it; on the contrary, they copied it openly, publicly, and were praised by Sun for doing so. Until Sun got bought and the new owners decided they wanted to retroactively change the rules (shades of SCO).

I don't envy that jury at all. Google is claiming "fair use", which is really a difficult, and nebulous concept. Hell, it's a rough subject for law school students to grasp in copyright courses.

At first look, fair use doesn't seem that difficult. US Copyright law identifies four factors to be used to determine whether an infringement is excused as "fair use":

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Problems: each of those factors already starts out as a vague kind of grey area, and while some examples are provided in the legislative history, none of those is further defined in the statute. On top of that, there's a rather large amount of case law focusing on what each of the four factors really means in any given context.

While it's easy enough to armchair lawyer yourself and just blow through a fair use analysis, that's simply not how it works at trial. Determining whether or not it's fair use when there is already solid precedent for your context is tough enough -- making that decision on a novel concept is just a motherfucking bear.

The law is less precise than people make it out to be. There still hasn't been a defining legal case for fair use the way that there have been for other aspects of the law, and I doubt that this will be the one. The likely outcome is a sort of average of what both sides arguing: Google gets to keep doing what it's doing, Oracle gets more money than they deserve, nothing changes on the legal front.
The SCOTUS cases that happen happen out of desperation —the plaintiff or defendant has so much at stake

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. --H. L. Mencken.

Your response is just what I meant by "armchair lawyering." I'm not making it complicated; the fair use defense is complicated. Copyright law in general is complicated.

While jury nullification (here in the more limited sense of disregarding jury instructions) might sound like it would be an easy hack, it's exactly the kind of shortcut that works only from the armchair. If they were to do as you suggest, the judge could (and probably would, since it would so clear that they disregarded the

Judge Alsup is in fact very much correct. Like I said, it's not simple. Fair use is a defense that excuses actions that would otherwise be a violation of copyright.

By car analogy: a car running a red light is breaking a traffic law, but if that car is an emergency vehicle with its lights on, while it's still technically breaking that traffic law in a sense, it's not a civil offense. The judge is just asking them to start out by first deciding if it was an emergency vehicle. Later the jury will decide if t

You have two multibillion dollar companies hiring the best lawyers money can buy, both arguing complex legal and technical issues. And a group of yokels you picked at random off the street - a group that can afford to sit through a long trial - is supposed to correctly decide the case on its merits?

I think the jury system, while laudable in its intent, is terribly flawed.